Half Life: Alyx is Five Years Old Today
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I also run on Linux exclusively and I could play Half-Life Alex almost flawlessy on the Steam Index. And other VR games as well, including Beatsaber, Gorn, Walkabout Golf and many others. I'm really grateful to Valve and their Proton.
Thanks, that's nice to know in case I decide to get a VR headset in the future.
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What boxes? The 1k pack comes with two base stations. You mean if you want to add 2 more? Then yea, fair.
The whole kit is $1300 before tax
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Its $500 today but at the time it was $1500 and required cable and beacons.
True in regards to the index kit but WMR has been around for a long time as well and that was a fraction of the price without base stations.
Also nobody has missed out on playing it yet! There's still time before half life 3!
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I'm confused though. The platform is the same cost as a gaming console if not cheaper? You can buy a quest3 at a good price.
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I genuinely can't believe Half Life Alyx is five years old.
No other video game has felt the way Alyx felt. No one else has taken such a bold swing in what a video game can be. It's burned into my mind as my Half Life game, the one that came out at just the right time for me.
It was also my "pandemic" game. While everyone else was playing Animal Crossing or Doom Eternal, I was playing and replaying Half Life Alyx.
It definitely feels like it's somewhat doomed to be less remembered in the popular consciousness than most big games that come out, and indeed the rest of the games in the Half Life lineage. Cries of "Half Life 3 when?" still abound in spite of the very clear effort Alyx made to move the story forward. But to me it feels like a game that still hasn't been topped in the five years since it came out, not by a long shot.
Half Life Alyx received a Game of the Year win from GameSpot, and nominations from a few other publications. When it came to events like The Game Awards with a dedicated "Best VR Game" category, it won handily.
Still haven't played it, haven't bought a VR gimmick headset yet. Is there a 2D mode? I'll play it tomorrow if so.
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Still haven't played it, haven't bought a VR gimmick headset yet. Is there a 2D mode? I'll play it tomorrow if so.
Nope. VR exclusive.
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But it's not required, there are much cheaper options, especially today with used quest 2 devices.
The "other reasons" people aren't buying affordable VR setups is because they don't trust Meta or their privacy policies. If the new Valve headset was $300-500 it would go a long way. But $1200 isn't it.
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Still haven't played it, haven't bought a VR gimmick headset yet. Is there a 2D mode? I'll play it tomorrow if so.
I think there's a mod for that iirc
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The game starts at 60 USD and goes down to 30 pretty often. If you have VR already, it's not very expensive.
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True in regards to the index kit but WMR has been around for a long time as well and that was a fraction of the price without base stations.
Also nobody has missed out on playing it yet! There's still time before half life 3!
True
it's doomed now, but I love my Reverb G2, I got it for the same price as a Quest 2 (before the q3 released) and, having used both, its a lot better.
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I'm confused though. The platform is the same cost as a gaming console if not cheaper? You can buy a quest3 at a good price.
If you already have a (lower midrange) PC, then yes.
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The whole kit is $1300 before tax
Your looking at it in Canadian. I'm looking at usd. So we're saying the same thing, just different currencies lol. Woops.
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I genuinely can't believe Half Life Alyx is five years old.
No other video game has felt the way Alyx felt. No one else has taken such a bold swing in what a video game can be. It's burned into my mind as my Half Life game, the one that came out at just the right time for me.
It was also my "pandemic" game. While everyone else was playing Animal Crossing or Doom Eternal, I was playing and replaying Half Life Alyx.
It definitely feels like it's somewhat doomed to be less remembered in the popular consciousness than most big games that come out, and indeed the rest of the games in the Half Life lineage. Cries of "Half Life 3 when?" still abound in spite of the very clear effort Alyx made to move the story forward. But to me it feels like a game that still hasn't been topped in the five years since it came out, not by a long shot.
Half Life Alyx received a Game of the Year win from GameSpot, and nominations from a few other publications. When it came to events like The Game Awards with a dedicated "Best VR Game" category, it won handily.
"But... the future refused to change" -- game over screen, Chrono Trigger
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Still haven't played it, haven't bought a VR gimmick headset yet. Is there a 2D mode? I'll play it tomorrow if so.
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I think there's a mod for that iirc
The fit site release has a mod included for flat screen mode.
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Thanks essay!
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I thought you still needed to plug the VR headset into a computer ? is the computer built into the headset ?
Most of the common ones now do wireless streaming from the PC for PCVR. But yes, for PCVR games you will still need a PC to run it. There are some VR headsets that are capable of running some games on it without a connected PC, like my Quest 2 can run Superhot or BeatSaber etc.
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I thought you still needed to plug the VR headset into a computer ? is the computer built into the headset ?
Yes for the standalone devices, but you can connect them via cable or wirelessly to a pc too
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If you have a Quest headset, ALVR allows you to stream SteamVR to it.
I believe the Valve Index allows for Linux usage, but I've never owned one.
Seems like WiVRn is also a good solution these days, just tried it out for the first time a few hours ago and I'm very impressed.
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The "other reasons" people aren't buying affordable VR setups is because they don't trust Meta or their privacy policies. If the new Valve headset was $300-500 it would go a long way. But $1200 isn't it.
That is why those other VR sets are so cheap.
With valve, you're paying for the hardware. With Meta, you're the product
